Provision of Palliative Care for Oncological Patients in Pakistan: A Review of Challenges and Current Practices

Palliative Care in Pakistan: Current Landscape, Challenges, Progress and the Way Forward

“…Formal palliative care services presently are provided by only a handful of institutes in the country and that too primarily in the private sector with a few hospices in Karachi, Hyderabad and Rawalpindi run mainly by faith based or other charitable based or non-governmental based organizations. As a specialty multidisciplinary service, palliative care currently is being offered at five major tertiary care hospitals in Pakistan; two of them based in Karachi that includes the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) and the Indus Hospital (TIH) along with Islamabad based Shifa International Hospital (SIH) and Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center (SKMCHRC) at Lahore and Peshawar [19]. Some isolated provision of palliative care services is also being offered at some other centers like Liaquat National Hospital, Karachi.…”